Tackling carbs and gluten in bread
Some find a piece of bread hard to swallow due to medical reasons
Ah, bread. Whether they love it or hate it, everyone seems to have an opinion about it. There are whole diets built around avoiding carbs and gluten in bread — sometimes by choice, sometimes by medical necessity.
This piece is written for those in the latter camp — people who enjoy bread, but have to skip it because they have celiac disease, because carbs affect their type 2 diabetes, or because wheat triggers unpleasant gastrointestinal symptoms.
Science and technology may be coming to the rescue. Researchers and food companies around the world are trying to develop bread without side effects or with health-enhancing components, using newly developed enzymes, novel ingredients and gene editing. Read on for some hopeful developments.
Up to 45 million Americans have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), which causes symptoms such as abdominal pain, gas and diarrhea. Researchers believe that one of the culprits of IBS is food high in FODMAPs (which are poorly absorbed fermentable carbohydrates). Wheat is a well-known FODMAP. It contains carbs called fructans, which some people with IBS have trouble digesting.
Finnish company Fazer Mills recently introduced an enzyme called LOFO, which can help lower the fructan content in wheat bread. That means bakers could produce low FODMAP bread for people with IBS. Researchers have found that a diet low in FODMAPs can help improve symptoms in about 70 per cent of people with IBS.
The secret ingredient is fructanase, an enzyme that helps the body break down fructans into smaller units, which may be gentler on the stomach. According to company reports, this enzyme decreases fructans by 50 per cent and does not change the taste or texture of the bread. For some people with IBS, reducing fructans by half will give relief. Others may need to avoid fructans entirely, so this bread may not help.
There is lots of test baking going on in the United States using the LOFO enzyme, but no bread is on the market yet.
When used in breadmaking, gluten is responsible for the elasticity that gives bread its unique texture. It’s also the protein that triggers an immune response for the 3 million Americans with celiac disease, and it can cause unpleasant symptoms for those with gluten sensitivity.
Researchers across the globe are hoping to develop wheat that’s lower in gluten for those who are mildly intolerant, or to change the DNA of wheat so gluten is not a problem for people with celiac disease.
Dan Voytas, a professor in the Genetics, Cell Biology and Development Department at the University of Minnesota, is part of a team that developed a reduced-gluten wheat using gene-editing technology. Not to be confused with genetic modification, gene editing doesn’t add any foreign genes into the mix. Instead, it deletes or splices in part of an organism’s own genome.
Voytas’ lab has created a prototype for reduced-gluten wheat.
“This type of wheat is meant for people with gluten sensitivity, or those who want to reduce gluten in their diet,” Voytas says. “I believe we will eventually be able to make wheat without proteins that elicit the immune response in people with celiac disease, and they will one day be able to consume this product, too. I think we’re looking at a five-year timeline.”
So, how does it work? Using gene-editing technology called CRISPR/Cas9, researchers modify the celiac-causing gluten gene.
“We know which proteins in wheat create an immune response, so we delete those genes so it no longer makes the protein that causes that immunogenic response,” Voytas says. “In our initial study, immune reaction was reduced by 85 per cent.”
But wait — if gluten provides structure to bread, will reduced-gluten wheat flour change the taste and texture of bread? Perhaps.
“When you change the gluten content, you change the functionality of the product,” Voytas says. “So this flour may not be used for all purposes, but will be better than rice or corn for bread. It will still have a lot of the properties that we like in wheat flour.”
While some scientists are actively working on reducing or eliminating components in bread (such as fructans and gluten), others are asking “what can we add to bread to make it healthier?”
European bakers are experimenting with tritordeum flour, a newly developed hybrid of wheat and wild barley. Its manufacturer says it yields 30 per cent more fibre than traditional wheat flour, so the same piece of bread would have enhanced health benefits. Other bakers are adding fibre by blending traditional wheat flour with lupin bean or lentil flour.